


Heather

by uumuu



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: F/F, Kissing, Pre-Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 11:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6236566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hinoe wonders why Reiko is always alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heather

**Author's Note:**

> Fills the Isolation/Loneliness square in my ladiesbingo card.

“Do you not have a family?” 

The words leave Hinoe's mouth almost on their own, guided by a strange impulse – the strange pull she feels towards this bizarre human child. 

Hinoe isn't fond of humans, and stays away from them if she can, but she knows enough of how they live their lives. She knows it's not normal for a human child to be always by herself. Humans are herd creatures: they cluster together in groups, have babies with each other and raise them, much like animals. Reiko has never even mentioned any friends, on the (admittedly few) times they've met – by utter chance, Hinoe keeps telling herself. 

Reiko seems to exist in her own universe, a life separate from both humans and youkai. 

The water of the river next to which they are sitting flows by quietly, its surface unruffled by winds or currents. Reiko sits with her legs stretched out on the grass, her skirt hiked up to the middle of her thighs. Her uniform is torn in places and stained not just with dirt, giving off an impression of utter neglect. 

“I do,” Reiko replies out of the blue, when Hinoe has all but forgotten her question already. 

“And?”

“And what?”

“...Why are you always alone?”

Reiko shrugs with one of her cheeky grins. “They just don't like me,” she says. She hops to her feet, bends down again and picks a pebble, which she flings into the water. “Nobody likes me.”

Hinoe watches her. Reiko takes a second stone and hurls that too towards the river, then a third. She has a bruise on her elbow. Hinoe still recalls how her hands had been bruised when they had first met. She absentmindedly drags on her pipe, and only when she exhales nothing more than her own breath she realises she has forgotten to lit it. She sighs, lifting her left hand to finger the pin Reiko recovered for her.

“ _I_ like you,” she murmurs, just when a fourth stone lunges with a loud splash into the water. 

Reiko lowers her raised arm and turns.

“You like me?”

Hinoe tilts her head up to meet Reiko's gaze, which is intent and searching, tinged with a hint of surprise. “I would not spend time with you if I did not like you.”

Reiko walks over to her and kneels down next to her, folding her legs beneath herself. She stares at Hinoe in silence for a while, then surprise melts away from her eyes, and insolence and brashness are back on her face. “You like me,” she repeats, uttering the words slowly as if trying to assess their meaning. “Why?”

“Why? You are beautiful, for a human, and strong.”

“I don't scare you?”

“I am way more powerful than you.”

Reiko stretches her right hand to touch Hinoe's cheek. “Are you really sure of that?”

Hinoe stiffens a little, but taps Reiko's cheek with her pipe in turn. “Try me.”

Reiko is very much ready take up the challenge, but instead of speaking she swiftly leans in and places a kiss on Hinoe's lips. It's sloppy, clumsy, and leaves Hinoe wide-eyed. 

“There, I took you off guard already,” Reiko boasts, drawing back barely enough to speak.

Hinoe blinks once, twice, then puts her free hand on Reiko's shoulder and kisses her back, bearing down on her until Reiko falls back on the grass, her chest heaving and her cheeks slightly flushed. Her mouth is pulled up in a smirk. 

Hinoe licks her lips, musing that anybody else – human or youkai – would have been already dead if they had _tried_ kissing her. “We are even.”

Reiko's smirk grows even wider, and for a moment she seems carefree, and not lonely. “For now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Purple heather symbolises admiration, beauty and solitude.


End file.
